67 
Guards at the Gates 
A news item in the New York Times states that park vandalism, 
in Central Park alone, has cost the city $200,000 in three years. 
The vandalism included injuries to benches and sprinkling system, 
the uprooting of entire trees, shrubs, and hedges, and other damage. 
Among the items listed are: 15 large trees above four feet caliper 
badly mutilated; 204 shrubs stolen: 4729 shrubs destroyed ; large 
areas of ground-cover plants destroyed by tramping. The land- 
scape architect and chief engineer of the Park Department are 
quoted as estimating that about 40 per cent. of the rehabilitation 
work accomplished during the past three years at a cost of $500,- 
coo has been undone by vandals. As a result the Fifth Avenue 
Association has asked the Board of Estimate and Apportionment 
for an appropriation for special park police to supplement the 
regular police. 
We have had occasion in several preceding annual reports to 
note distressing acts of vandalism in the Brooklyn Botanic Gar- 
den, and reference is made to the trouble in Central Park as illus- 
trating the fact that this Botanic Garden is not unique, in this 
respect. The situation has steadily improved here, and it is in- 
structive to note that it is the very remedy recommended by the 
Wifth Avenue Association for Central Park that has proved effec- 
tive here. In particular the plan, adopted for the first time in 
1930, of having a guard at every entrance to the Garden has prob- 
ably accomplished more than any other one thing by refusing ad- 
“gangs” of adolescents, children unaccom- 
cf 
mission to vagrants, 
panied by parent or other adult responsible for their conduct, and 
other persons obviously undesirable. This plan was begun on 
Saturday, April 12, and continued until October, with the exception 
of one week following Easter Sunday. 
The plan was made possible by a supplementary appropriation 
of $2000 made by the city on March 28 for per diem labor. But 
this is not, of itself, sufficient. Respectable looking parents have 
been known, in this Garden, to deliberately set young children over 
a low wire fence into a plantation of Daffodils, and watch them 
pick generous handfuls of the flowers. Such instances emphasize 
the need of ample provision for guards in addition to those at the 
gates. ‘There is slight satisfaction and no real restitution in having 
a vandal arrested and fined Five Dollars for destroying a rare 
jaan 
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